Prefixless q-ary balanced codes with fast syndrome-based error correction

Abstract: We investigate a Knuth-like scheme for balancing q-ary codewords, which has the virtue that look-up tables for coding and decoding the prefix are avoided by using precoding and error correction techniques. We show how the scheme can be extended to allow for error correction of single channel errors using a fast decoding algorithm that depends on syndromes only, making it considerably faster compared to the prior art exhaustive decoding strategy. A comparison between the new and prior art schemes, both in terms of redundancy and error performance, completes the study